This is something that's been on my mind for a while. I know needless gimmickry and pointless touch controls are a bugbear for a lot of people, but there are many games which, one way or another, make very good use of the system and use the stylus for direct interaction on screen to produce a great game which just wouldn't be the same with a pad or mouse. Nintendo found out very early in the development process that a 3D touchscreen was a no-no because something in the way of the screen screws up the 3D effect (which is going to give mobile phones a problem if they want to jump on the 3D bandwagon later down the line).

So what we have now is a large, wide 3D screen and a small touch screen. Previously, the screens have been identical and developers have been able to move the action to whichever one is most suitable. So if the touch screen is for selecting icons, the action is taking place at the top, if you need to be directly interacting with objects in the game (tapping out cubes in Picross, stroking your dog in Nintendogs, drawing lines for Kirby to run along, tapping targets in Point Blank) then the action can be on the bottom screen and the top screen can be used for something else - stats, filler art, whatever.

Are companies going to dare do this with the 3DS, when so much of the console's new appeal is in that top screen? If a game would benefit from direct interaction through the stylus, would a company have the player looking at the small, non-3D screen all the time and just use the 3D screen for stats and filler? Are we going to see the touch screen used more like a 'tablet', where your actions on the bottom screen are relayed to the top screen?

You could also use the touch screen to move a cursor on the 3D screen ( like a mouse pointer ) and still interact with the objects on the 3d screen.
I wonder why people feel the need to advertise their fears on a public forum.
Like before the Wii came out, a lot of people were skeptics about the wii remote, saying that it would be impossible to play with it for hours, assuming that they needed to keep their arms straight pointing at the TV the whole time.
I say people should calm down and wait until the handheld gets released.
Any speculation at this point, it's just what it is.
I think developers will use the new hardware 3D capabilities at first because of it's novelty, but once they will start to get familiar with the other features, they will start to develop games that we are not able to even guess at this point in time.
Where you expecting something like Ghost Trick or Hotel Dusk when you first got your DS ?
So let's wait and see, I'm sure that given the right tools, developers can be very creative and use whatever it takes to deliver a unique and satisfying gaming experience on the 3DS, whether it's touch screen based or head tracking technology , we'll see.

Well, seeing as the action of Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Survivor Overclocked will take place on the bottom screen - stats, maps and more info displayed on the top screen (IN 3D!!!1) -
I think there'll be a reasonable amount of other companies that will use the touchscreen instead of focusing on the 3D screen.

I mean, games that use the touch screen just to select a special move and all that rubbish, come on.
Games like layton, brain training, that's what the touch screen was made for.
But since SSIV and starfox already use it, guess they will be repeating what they did for fighting games etc. Shame.

Exactly, we're not talking about games which use the touch screen as buttons, a joystick or a mouse, we're talking about games where you directly interact with the action on the touchscreen like The World Ends With You.

I mean, there's some games that work really well with a touchscreen but far too often games are shoehorned into a touchscreen compatible system and end up sucking. If a game can only be played with a touchscreen then that's fine, odds are it was built for it (I think a prime example would be Elite Beat Agents, off the top of my head). If a game just has tacked on touchscreen controls (think of the bagillion crappy DS multiconsole games), then it's bad.

And please, for the love of god, get rid of touchscreen buttons. I didn't like them on any iOS game, and there's no way they'll be better than real buttons. I mean one of the reasons I'm probably going NGP > 3DS is because it has 2 analogs and they don't have to shoehorn dual analog games to a single analog and the touchscreen (or an analog stick and face buttons, which was pretty average on the original PSP although it works better than the touchscreen).

I can't see using 3D and the touch screen and having to adjust the eyes back and forth, I'll play mostly in 2D mode anyway. BTW Steeldiver looks awesome, it uses the gyros and the touch screen, those waves in 3D must look great.